On the night of Nov. 5, 2024, my co-organizers and I were at our favorite restaurant celebrating the nearing culmination of the past months’ efforts. Tossing back my third Aperol spritz, I decided that I was going to ignore the Times’ election updates and instead opt to learn the fate of the nation the next morning. Since mid-July, I had been in Tempe, Arizona, working overtime in an effort to send the state and its 11 electoral votes into the hands of the Harris-Walz ticket on that very night.
The rest of America sat on edge, awaiting election results from seven states in particular that were likely to determine the winner of the presidential election. A great ideological chasm separated the candidates, ensuring that animosities would fill the air in the following days, months or years, regardless of the victor.
We know how this one goes. Donald Trump swept all seven swing states, winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and regrettably Arizona. Trump won his largest swing state margin in Arizona, winning 5.5 percent more of the vote than Harris. Puzzlingly, at the same time, Democratic senate candidate Ruben Gallego was able to comfortably win in a state which had gone to Democrats in only two presidential elections since 1948. Not only that, but he won his race by the largest margin out of any swing state senate race in 2024. And he did it all with a reputation as a progressive! All of this begs the question: How did he do it?
Having spent months immersing myself in the culture and landscape of politics in the Grand Canyon State, I needed to know why the party that I had been on the payroll of was able to perform so differently in two statewide elections. As a part of my conclusive paper on my experience with Occidental’s Campaign Semester program, I looked into the strategy differences between the Gallego and Harris campaigns. What I found helps shed light on why these contradictory election results managed to coexist. Perhaps more importantly, it gives a path to victory to a Democratic party reeling from a catastrophic loss.
If you know your Arizona politics, you might reflexively point to the poor candidate quality represented by Republican senate candidate Kari Lake. I’m not going to say that she wasn’t a bad candidate, but I also don’t think that alone tanked her performance. She had modeled her own political persona in the image (or maybe the shadow) of Trump’s, which should have given her a boost in a state that he won or at least helped her do better than run nearly 8 percentage points behind her close political ally. But that’s for another article.
As for Gallego’s campaign, he focused largely on appealing to the significant Latino population of the state. What made him stand out from his party was that he understood Arizonan views on immigration better than many other Democrats. He knew that many Latino people in Arizona considered the situation at the border to be a mess. He didn’t assume that Latinos would automatically vote for Democrats because of Trump’s history with “the wall” and his racism towards Latino people. He knew that he had to promise stability and solutions to get their votes. Notably, one of his most-viewed Youtube videos is a Spanish-language ad expressing his support for fortifying the border.
Gallego knew that high inflation made people (especially Latinos) feel inadequate and incapable of supporting their families. Breaking from typical Democratic messaging lines of “jobs jobs jobs” and “look at our record,” he took a family-centered approach. He actively engaged with the community, frequently hosting and making appearances at boxing match watch parties, Mexican rodeos and carne asada cookouts. Understanding the popular disdain for politics and politicians, he met people where they stood, rather than forcing them to come to him.
His focus on the opinions of Latino voters in the election year proved to be effective. According to ABC’s exit polls of Arizona, Gallego won 64% of Latinos and 58% of Latinas, compared to 55% of Latinos and 54% of Latinas for Harris. At the same time, he was able to pull 10% of Republicans and 48% of Independents to vote for him, while Harris only got 7% and 44% respectively.
The Harris campaign, on the other hand, came to a fork in the road and took the path on the right. She boasted about her endorsements by the Cheneys, revealed she owned a Glock and generally did anything she could to appear preferable to moderates and conservatives. In the process, she alienated the progressive and the working class of the party, and made it harder for the party’s core to be excited about voting for her. People didn’t show up for Harris because her campaign didn’t motivate them to. Nevertheless, I applaud her for being able to turn a Biden campaign headed for disaster into a highly competitive ticket.
The Harris campaign did its best to run towards the political center in a valiant effort to pick up the voters that were supposedly there. But instead, it fell straight into the ideological chasm between the candidates.
There are many things that the Democrats can learn from this election, but atop the list must be never to abandon its core. Second to that must be to campaign like Gallego did: get local, get on the ground, don’t take people for granted, don’t dilute your message. Simplifying your approach, telling people what they want to hear and listening to your constituents first can help separate you from the chaff to come through being a true servant to the people, rather than a career politician.
Democratic heavyweight Chuck Schumer famously said in 2016 that Hillary Clinton would pick up two socially moderate suburbanites for each blue-collar worker that voted for Trump. This sounds awfully similar to the strategy of the Harris campaign. Simply put, the Democratic party cannot afford to continue to make the same mistakes election after election. The way forward has never been clearer. A rehabilitation of the Democratic party must take place in the next four years: a diverse, progressive, working-class and bold party of the people must replace the uninspiring rendition spawned in fear of Trumpist extremism.
Contact Oliver Lee at olee3@oxy.edu
